


Not Quite Us Anymore

by spiced_1990



Category: Spice Girls
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-27
Updated: 2020-07-27
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:15:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25540432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spiced_1990/pseuds/spiced_1990
Summary: On tour again. Too much history. Or maybe not enough.
Relationships: Melanie Brown/Geri Halliwell
Comments: 2
Kudos: 19





	Not Quite Us Anymore

i.

They sit two chairs apart and it’s not exactly awkward but it’s not entirely comfortable either. After this many years and this many interviews, Geri’s pretty sure everything should be second nature but Mel’s not making eye contact and that’s always left her feeling adrift.

“So, how does it feel, everyone being back together again?”

Except Vicki. It goes unsaid. She lets Emma take the question, resists the urge to jump in. She’s been stifling that for awhile now, she thinks, the want and the restlessness and the strange discomfort in her own skin. Practice, her Mum says, it’ll just take a little practice until she realises how right this is for her. Part of growing up. As a teenager, she had thought she’d be grown at eighteen, on the steps of a nursing home at fifty.

“And everyone’s behaving?” Chris asks, looking straight at her as if anyone expects her to be anything but proper and demure and perfect these days. Sometimes, when she’s not feeling relieved, she feels disconcerted by her own self.

Mel B’s mouth opens (she’s not meant to be looking at the red red – damn) and closes again, and in her mind, Geri likes to imagine she was going to say something conspiratorial, something only they’d know.

“Ah, fuck it,” her colleague finally says. “We all know that _I’m_ not. Party of one, everyone invited.”

ii.

She wishes she could dance. It’s dumb to still be insecure about it, and she thought she was used to it, but Mel B is taking to the new choreography like it was created specifically for her body (there’s this enticing dint that appears on her left hip during this one sequence and it’s hard to take her eyes – and thoughts – off it) and she’s on the verge of asking for yet another break.

It’s not like she doesn’t try and that’s maybe the most frustrating thing, how hard she has to work at things that have always come as easily as breathing to everyone else. She feels wooden and knows she looks it as well. The mirrored wall stares accusingly at her.

Melanie lets out a long sigh and she has to swallow the curses that she wants to launch at her friend’s face. “We’ll get there,” Geri says, trying to sound reassuring. Apparently she sounds fucking insecure instead, because suddenly hands are on her waist from behind, fingertips firm through her slightly sweaty shirt.

“Of course we will, Ginge,” Mel says, pressing a kiss to the skin of her neck like she’s allowed to do that now that everyone in the room knows something more of their history than she’d ever been prepared to share. Geri refuses to flinch.

iii.

Sometimes when she looks at the crowd, rapturous and adoring and all for them, it feels like sparks are travelling up her body, little hot spikes of pleasure and energy that she’s rarely experienced at any other time. Or at least not in a long time. The early days of many of her relationships, of course, and crazy, drunken nights out on the town when someone tried to catch her eye. Lately, there’s a faint echo of that in moments with her children, the first time Monty had said ‘I love you’, Bluebell curling up against her in bed one rainy Sunday morning. 

A hand finds its way to her hip and she shouldn’t be able to name the person it’s attached to so quickly, so confidently, but she can. She doesn’t feel that same lightning bolt at her nerve ends, but instead her whole body shuts in on itself, stills so that the only thing she can feel and focus on is warmth and soft skin. 

It’s not surprising.

When Geri’s at home, it’s easy to get caught up in the fondness in Christian’s eyes, the security and monotony and calmness of it all, but this whole experience (and yes, Mel specifically) makes her feel itchy. And she’s now allowed to scratch. Not anymore.

iv.

She receives the text at three am, four short words that beckon and entice and worry. _Please come. Room 154._

The door is ajar when she arrives and Geri resists the urge to chide Melanie for her carelessness the moment she takes in her friend’s face. Over the years, she’s seen her every way and then some, and if asked, she could probably catalogue her array of expressions and emotions as well as she can her own. 

Thankfully, nobody asks.

Mel’s curled up on her bed, looking too small and too vulnerable, and it makes Geri want to hurt somebody. Instead, she lifts up the duvet and sheets and wraps herself around the curves of the younger woman’s body. It’s almost completely dark in the hotel room and that’s always the way she’s liked it, much to Mel’s chagrin. 

“You came.”

It sounds to Geri’s ears like a question and she resents that, hates herself a little bit for causing even a moment of doubt. 

v.

The dressing room is quiet and Geri needs the moment to prepare herself, so much so that when the Mels enter, talking about god knows what to each other, it’s more than an effort to stop from visibly bristling. Apparently her acting skills haven’t improved any, because after shooting Mel C a look, her once-upon-a-time partner in crime glares at her and promptly sits her arse down on the couch opposite her. 

“Problem?” Mel asks, and she’s clearly looking for a fight and for the first time in weeks, Geri’s prepared to give her one. It’s reckless, really, because fights have always ended one of two ways for them, and neither of those is an option right now, one of them being something she can't consider ever again (and she refuses to think about why that thought makes her chest feel heavy).

“Only with you barging in here without even bothering to knock,” Geri retorts, the attempt at a rebuke dismissed with a wave of a hand and a snort of ridicule.

“You know, babe, you’re so brittle these days that I feel like a single tap and your whole fucking shell’s gonna crack wide open.”

The disappointment and sympathy in her eyes are burns. When Mel B leaves, it’s with a pat to the shoulder and a soft kiss to the lips, and maybe hell and heaven aren’t so different after all.

vi.

It’s a feeling of deflation, but maybe some relief as well. Normality is underrated, and that’s something twenty-five year old Geri would’ve scoffed at, something her onetime confidante still laughs at. She wishes she didn’t care so much. Her desk looks the same as when she left it prior to the tour’s start, cluttered photo frames and ripped-from-magazine recipes and sticky notes with indecipherable handwriting. A sigh leaves her mouth, and Monty looks at her curiously. “Hi, baby. You gonna miss it too, are you?”

Projection, Mel C would say, and she wouldn’t necessarily be wrong. There have been no new texts since the morning of the final show, no special goodbye just for her, nothing, and Geri is more than aware that it’s what she wanted so she can't complain. 

Except. She presses the letters on the screen with more force than is necessary. 

“Facetime tonight? If you’re not too busy partying or hooking up with someone your daughter’s age.”

Three dots. Typing. 

“Facetime tonight. If you’re not too busy being an uptight, judgmental bitch. Wear black for me.”

Christian must wonder why she feels the need to close the door, shut him and everyone else away from a simple conversation with a colleague. But he doesn’t ask and she won’t ever tell.


End file.
